One of the potential long-term benefits of the Cornwall Council spending review is that it's encouraged officials and councillors to think very hard about what they do, why they do it and how much it costs.
For example I have yet to find one single back-bench councillor who thinks it's a good idea to keep the £46,000 presence at the Royal Cornwall Show rather than make a similar size cut in rural bus subsidies - and yet this is precisely the choice recommended by the 10-member council Cabinet.
Councillors next week get down to the nitty-gritty of each service portfolio amid some confusion over the "alternative suggestions" they are allowed to make. Council leader Alec Robertson told the Cabinet meeting that councillors campaigning to save libraries, for example, could not suggest taking cash from the Adult Care budget instead - nor vice versa. As several Cabinet members put it, "the bottom line is the bottom line" - suggesting that alternative savings would have to come from within the relevant portfolio.
This means that any fundamental political choices will have to come in the form of an amendment to the budget at the full council meeting on 30th November.
Incidentally I appear to have irritated some members by asking why the Star Chambers did not consider reducing the size of the council, saving more than £12,000 for each member dropped. The price of saving the Camelford leisure centre, for example, is equivalent to cutting the size of the council by only eight councillors, from 123 to 115. Would the council really run any differently with "only" 115 members?
I wonder if the eight councillors with the poorest attendance records would volunteer their positions for the sake of the Camelford community? I know of at least one member (not from Camelford!) who has not turned up for any meetings at all in recent months.
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